Starbucks' Artisan Bacon Sandwich: Taking One for the Team

I took one for the team this morning and finally consented to try one of Starbucks' new artisan breakfast sandwiches that have been created as part of an effort to put "real food" into the stores aside from fatty pastries and dry croissants.

Y'all owe me for this one.

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The Good: The artisan bacon sandwich that I ordered was not short on the bacon. There were six strips of thick bacon that were so good, they made me briefly forget that they'd just been zapped in a microwave instead of cooked in a skillet. The artisan roll that snuggled the bacon, egg and cheese inside of it was warm and pillowy, not at all chewy or tough. Together with my grande coffee, the total came to just over $5.

The Bad: The bacon, while good on its own, was very salty. Add to that the "parmesan frittata" (fancy words for the eggy bit) and the strong Gouda cheese and you had one extremely salty sandwich. I tried to eat it as God intended, in sandwich form, but couldn't make it past two bites without gagging from the excess sodium. Solution? Eat the bacon separately, then the egg and cheese. This left me with an entirely different problem, however: on their own, the bland frittata and cheese tasted mostly of salt and air -- not an appetizing alternative. The frittata in particular had that peculiar taste of something which has been reconstituted with water -- astronaut eggs.

The Ugly: The amount of time it took to prepare the small sandwich was tantamount to painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The Starbucks workers sighed heavily upon my order and set about constructing the thing with much animosity. Fifteen minutes later, I finally had the thing. Complaining about this after I disliked the sandwich so much reminds me of the opening lines of Annie Hall: "Two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, 'Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.' The other one says, 'Yeah, I know; and such small portions.'"

At 20 grams of fat and a whopping 1,050 milligrams of sodium (I knew it!), I won't be ordering this again. Besides, it would be quicker and less painful to make the damned thing at home anyway. At home, the surliness is free.